International Times: Opportunities for mutual exchange, generating sparks

My latest review for International Times is on Threads of Life by Chiharu Shiota and Heart to Heart by Yin Xiuzhen at the Hayward Gallery:

 
'Shiota’s signature installations engulf ordinary objects – such as shoes, keys, beds, chairs and dresses – within huge weblike structures of red, black or white woollen thread. These floor-to-ceiling immersive works explore the body, memory, consciousness and the fragility of existence, while making visible the intangible connections we make throughout life. Shiota describes the making of her delicately woven structures as painting three dimensionally in a space with string.'

My earlier pieces for IT are: an interview with the artist Alexander de Cadenet; an interview with artist, poet, priest Spencer Reece, an interview with the poet Chris Emery, an interview with Jago Cooper, Director of the the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, a profile of singer-songwriter Bill Fay, plus reviews of: U2's 'Days of Ash', Mumford and Sons' 'Prizefighter' and Moby's 'Future Quiet'; 'Collected Poems' by Kevin Crossley-Holland; 'Lux' by Rosalía; 'Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere'; 'Great Art Explained' by James Payne; 'Down River: In Search of David Ackles' by Mark Brend; 'Headwater' by Rev Simpkins; 'The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art' by Jonathan A. Anderson; 'Breaking Lines' at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, albums by Deacon Blue, Mumford and Sons, and Andrew Rumsey, also by Joy Oladokun and Michael Kiwanaku; 'Nolan's Africa' by Andrew Turley; Mavis Staples in concert at Union Chapel; T Bone Burnett's 'The Other Side' and Peter Case live in Leytonstone; Helaine Blumenfeld's 'Together' exhibition, 'What Is and Might Be and then Otherwise' by David Miller; 'Giacometti in Paris' by Michael Peppiatt, the first Pissabed Prophet album; and 'Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord', a book which derives from a 2017 symposium organised by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art.

Several of my short stories have been published by IT including three about Nicola Ravenscroft's EarthAngel sculptures (then called mudcubs), which we exhibited at St Andrew's Wickford in 2022. The first story in the series is 'The Mudcubs and the O Zone holes'. The second is 'The Mudcubs and the Clean-Up King', and the third is 'The mudcubs and the Wall'. My other short stories to have been published by International Times are 'The Black Rain', a story about the impact of violence in our media, 'The New Dark Ages', a story about principles and understandings that are gradually fading away from our modern societies, and 'The curious glasses', a story based on the butterfly effect.

IT have also published several of my poems, including 'The ABC of creativity', which covers attention, beginning and creation, and 'The Edge of Chaos', a state of existence poem. Also published have been three poems from my 'Five Trios' series. 'Barking' is about St Margaret’s Barking and Barking Abbey and draws on my time as a curate at St Margaret's. 'Bradwell' is a celebration of the history of the Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall, the Othona Community, and of pilgrimage to those places. Broomfield in Essex became a village of artists following the arrival of Revd John Rutherford in 1930. His daughter, the artist Rosemary Rutherford, also moved with them and made the vicarage a base for her artwork including paintings and stained glass. Then, Gwynneth Holt and Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones moved to Broomfield in 1949 where they shared a large studio in their garden and both achieved high personal success. 'Broomfield' reviews their stories, work, legacy and motivations.

To read my poems published by Stride, click here, here, here, here, here, and here. My poems published in Amethyst Review are: 'Runwell', 'Are/Are Not', 'Attend, attend' and 'Maritain, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages'.

I am among those whose poetry has been included in Thin Places & Sacred Spaces, a recent anthology from Amethyst Press. I also had a poem included in All Shall Be Well: Poems for Julian of Norwich, the first Amethyst Press anthology of new poems.

'Five Trios' is a series of poems on thin places and sacred spaces in the Diocese of Chelmsford. The five poems in the series are:

• 'Barking';
• 'Bradwell';
• 'Broomfield';
• 'Pleshey'; and
• 'Runwell'.

These poems have been published by Amethyst Review and International Times.

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Shadows Fall - Redemption.

What Would Jesus Do in marriage

One of the bands that young people are wearing on their arms these days have the letters WWJD on them. WWJD stands for What Would Jesus Do and, when Romans 15. 1 - 13 says “May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” this passage is saying that you can’t follow a better rule of thumb in life or in marriage than that.

So as we think What Would Jesus Do in marriage we start by asking what does it mean to the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had. St Paul answers that question in his letter to the Philippians. There he says that the attitude you should have is the one that Christ Jesus had:

⁶ Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
 ⁷ Instead of this, of his own free will he gave up all he had,
      and took the nature of a servant.
   He became like a human being
      and appeared in human likeness.
 ⁸ He was humble and walked the path of obedience all the way to death—
      his death on the cross.

In marriage you are equal partners but, if you want to have the same attitude as Jesus, you won’t use your equality for your own advantage. Instead, each of you will do all you can to serve the other by giving all that you have and are to the other. God so loved that he gave and it is when we are in the mindset of giving to others that we are most fully in the mindset of Christ.

According to Paul, in Romans 15. 1 - 13, this means bearing with the failings of the other by not pleasing ourselves and seeking to please our neighbours for their good, to build them up. So, Paul is commending patience with the failings of the other and affirmation and encouragement of the other in order to build that person up. Remember, of course, that this intended to be mutual - two-way support and affirmation – but you should also be able to see that true love always involves sacrifice. In Jesus’ case, as we were reminded by the Philippians reading, this involved the ultimate sacrifice of his own life. Married love rarely involves the ultimate sacrifice but, when we are told to please our partner for their good rather than pleasing ourselves, we can see that sacrifice is involved.

Finally Paul says, “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you.” Ultimately, your relationship needs to be based not just on the love that you have for each other but on the love that Jesus has for each of you as individuals. He accepts you as you are – while you were still sinners he died for you. He didn’t wait for you to change and earn his love before dying for you. No, while you were still turned away from him is when he poured out his love on you by making the ultimate sacrifice for you. You are both loved equally and eternally by God and it is as you receive that love and marvel at that love that you will see the true beauty of your partner.

Let’s be frank, there are days for all of us who are married when we don’t feel love towards our partner. For whatever reason, there are days when we feel angry or frustrated with them. In those moments, we need to remember that ultimately the worth of our partner does not lie in what she or he has done to us or how I feel about that, their true worth lies in the fact that Jesus loved them so much that he gave his own life for them. When we allow that reality to come into the mix then it becomes possible to bear with the failings of our partner, not please ourselves and seek to please our partner for their good, to build them up.

That is what Jesus would do and that is the way in which Jesus wants you to live out your married life together. May you know God’s blessing on your marriage as you live out your married life in his way.

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Delirious? - Hang On To You.

The Commons Matrix

The following comes from Peter Challen:

The Commons Matrix

Attend to

a common theory of value,

integrally rooted

in both spirit and matter,

found in

philosophy, anthropology,

linguistics, communication, organisational behaviour;

in technology, history, culture,

environmentalism, economics,

law and political theory:

to explore and expose

many of the leading myopic

extant presuppositions

in our present systems,

heading for decline.

Recovering our mutuality,

note ahead the...

QUILLIGAN SEMINARS

Away with straight-edged rulers

to save a fractal universe.

In nature's persistent emergence

treat money and land as social commons,

like air and oceans,

the bio-sphere and deep deposits

of past storing centuries,

to serve all generations ahead.

Join our proto-type of

systemic recovery and renewal

at the Quilligan Seminars

in twelve days of May,

2012.

The Quilligan Seminars are an intensive social innovation project of 12 interrelated seminars in 12 days involving leading NGOs and thinks tanks. This series will foster an educational and research collaboration for facilitating transition to a more equitable world. It will demonstrate how differing starting points can lead to a commons ground. You can participate in one or more of the seminars.

James Quilligan is a globally renowned commons theorist/activist, policy analyst, and founder of the Global Commons Trust. He writes: "Modern economics has turned labour into a utility of the market and government. But the principles of the commons (people's negotiation of their own norms and rules for the management of social and natural resources) show us how to transcend utilitarian economics by transforming the traditional division of labour. New forms of value are already being created by these commons, whether they are traditional (irrigation ditches, pastures, indigenous cultures) or emerging (intellectual property, social networks, collaborative innovation)." To learn more about Mr. Quilligan’s work, click here.

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John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band - Isolation.